Dear The Rest Of The World, 

Just in case you were wondering why we treasure our free speech over here in Australia, I thought I'd explain to you how the billions of dollars spent by media organisations, including our public broadcaster, were utilised today to stimulate discussion and promote democratic ideals such as freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and the right of the public to access information. 

Our glorious news outlets have revealed the following to an enthusiastic public this morning:

1. Apparently a person appeared on television. The person was attractive and had an X chromosome. As a result of this person appearing on a top-rating television show about a sport nobody outside of this country plays, this person was subject to "lewd" comments from a "colourful" "celebrity" whose public relations platform consists of apologising to people with X chromosomes. The X chromosomed person in this instance has now been hospitalised. These elements have been mentioned by newspapers without any explicit links being drawn or any independent research having been done. 

2. As we speak, discussions are taking place on the national airwaves regarding the crucial question of whether Australian sportsmen playing the abovementioned sport are role models. Should they be role models? Do we expect too much from them? Are they a symptom of a broader problem in Australian society, namely binge drinking, or are they just boys making mistakes in hundred thousand dollar cars with alcohol running through their TAC sponsored bloodstreams? This is a particularly important question when considered alongside figures on Aboriginal life expectancy.

3. Heath Ledger remains deceased.

Excellent work, media.

I am in the Diamond Valley Leader.

That's my home town.

In the photograph, I am jump-starting a gum tree, with jumper leads and (these are the photographer's words) "crazy eyes".

If you are a Diamond Valley resident who maybe went to school with me or something, please understand that I was not in a serious accident impeding my intellectual or physical abilities, but merely am a victim of the media machine.

While we're at it, why is it that if you're a woman you're instructed by press photographers to "stop looking pretty - we want to see whacky. You're a comedian".

Why can't I be pretty too?

Yesterday, I worked until five in the State Library. At five, I got a train to the production meeting we were having at a pub in Richmond. We talked about lighting, staging, sets, sound cues, production management, and the fine art of creating and amending pdf documents. Then I drove straight to rehearsal.

We rehearsed until after nine, at which point I went home and finished some documents, and I got up this morning at six in order to get to work by seven. That's dark o'clock, my friends. That's not my usual caper.

Victoria Law Foundation, where I work, was hosting Major Michael Mori and over a hundred legal VIPs in the State Library for breakfast. This might not mean a lot to some people, but Major Michael Mori is David Hicks' lawyer, and David Hicks was officially charged last night, after five years in Guantanamo Bay prison.

In other words, whatever other long-lasting international repercussions there might be, my central concern this morning was that I had to fight my way to work through a scrum of reporters.

The David Hicks case, when it's explained to you, really looks like a mistake. The most conservative people in Melbourne were gathered in that theatre this morning and it was a pretty stunned silence.

Better go. I have rehearsals til nine. They say sleep deprivation is a form of torture, although I'm sure it's less offensive when it's you who's torturing yourself.

Have a relaxing weekend. Bastards.

Lessons in racism here.

This proves that those who say it is patronising to presume that racists are only being like that because they're manipulated are, well, manipulating the racists who clearly have no other alternative perspective with which to face the confusing world around them.

Great story anyway.

So I have been missing a fair bit from these pages recently because I have been organising an event for four hundred people in Hardware Lane in the city. This is why I find myself doing things like:

a) constructing "scales of justice" from plastic plates and silver wrapping paper on Australia Day while other people crowd surf and practice a strangely developing kind of slightly ironic slightly manic patriotism.

b) dressing up in a "Lady Justice" costume and swanning about selling raffle tickets to lawyers and judges and magistrates at seven in the morning in Hardware Lane.

c) getting to know intimate details about the various sizes and prices of paper cups.

So now I am back on board, writing various things that are not my script, in order to ensure that the script one day becomes a play. I am writing audition notices, press releases, mini biographies, and excuses that detail exactly why things aren't exactly being done by their very specific deadlines.

If anyone has a few spare hours up their sleeve next year about this time, come over to my place on Australia Day, there's some cutting and pasting I need you to do.

If you ever need inspiration for writing, the media during the Christmas season provideth.

Not only are there TV shows on during prime time that didn't quite work the first time they were aired (very good lessons, all of them) but the newspapers run stories like P-plater caught drunk with bathtub and Paris Hilton's Parents Enjoy Watching Her Sex Tape.

There are also people writing actually quite interesting things, although hardly any of these people are Australian, unfortunately. For instance, this, which is essentially a gossip column about Freud, and of course it is riddled with hilaaaarious freudian references and double meanings, but Freud is more interesting to me personally than a front page story about a country singer arriving at an airport (see here).

Also, anyone who has read Patrick Suskind's Perfume and is interested to hear it is being made into a film: read this.

I wish I could read more. In the meantime, I will read what little I can, watch bad TV, listen to good music, and wait for inspiration.

But inspiration, like everything else in my schedule at the moment, has a due date. The deadline for inspiration is the third of Jan. If I'm not writing on the third of Jan, I am firing myself.

It's official. I've been warned.

I have a sore frisbee arm.

Hurrah!

Best feeling in the world is the particular kind of exhausted you feel after chucking a frisbee at the beach for an hour and only stopping because it's dark and you left your glow-in-the-dark frisbee at home.

Now, of course, I am back to reality.

On a serious note... this weekend, Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who criticised her government and reported bravely on matters such as the war in Chechnya and the Beslan school disaster (on the way to which she was poisoned) was gunned down in the lift outside her apartment. She spoke at the Sydney Writers' Festival earlier this year (I didn't see her speak). Here are some of the other journalists who have been murdered in Russia in recent years, and these two journalists, from one of my favourite international radio stations, were killed in their tent this weekend as well. They had been researching for a documentary. All of this makes 2006 the most deadly year for journalists on record, apparently. Previously, 2005 was the most deadly year on record, and before that, it was 2004.

So when I talk about how crap Australian journalism is, it's not because I don't respect journalists. It's because I do. People are risking their lives because they recognise that media is a very powerful tool, and they are being murdered because of it. And today's Melbourne Age online stories? Brad and Angelina have a bodyguard who punched someone, Princess Mary is coming to visit, the MCG is ready for a terrorist attack on the basis of a rumour in a British newspaper, and there's a story called Sex Behind the Engagement Ring, which is the most viewed article of the day, and which is actually just lifted from the Telegraph.

I would like to think that Australia, being a "free" country, has greater opportunity for investigative journalism. Perhaps not.

I have to confess that I haven't exactly followed the AWB story, except that it has apparently cost tens of millions of dollars and it sounds mega boring (I mean, "wheat" and "Iraq" are not the most entertaining words to google, are they?).

But a couple of emails were read out in court today discussing how AWB money was being spent. One of the emails detailed how trenches were being built in order to "bury the Kurds under the cement". Oddly, nobody can remember ever seeing such an email (I know I'd probably forget that kind of thing). Despite the fact that one bloke burst into tears and had to be comforted by his wife, pretty much everyone else appears to be attending court in a fog of amnesia.

It will be interesting to see if the AWB folk suddenly start remembering things when they're threatened with charges of terrorism. If you search "terror" and "wheat" and "Iraq" and "links to Government" on google, it gets a bit more interesting, is all I'm saying.

Also announced today (and also something that would usually bore the pants right off me) is the fact that Australians owe a trillion dollars in personal debts (credit cards and houses and stuff). Being a bit mathematically retarded, I kind of don't really know if a trillion is a lot. I mean I know it's a lot for, you know, an icecream. Or rollerskates. But is it a lot for household debt?

Well apparently it is. Apparently it's our GDP. Apparently we OWE our own GDP.

Good on us.

Anyhoo, that's my attempt to comprehend two of the more dense stories in the news today. I'll leave you to struggle on without me on matters such as what Kylie's "vowing" to wear in her upcoming concert, or how "worrying" it might be that sport is being played in one State rather than in the other.

I do, however, feel compelled (against my better judgement and might I say everything I stand for) to whoop enthusiastically along the following lines: "Go Swans!"

(It's not me. It's Rita. It was that, or change the colours on the entire website to red and white. I've done what I can and I will struggle to regain my dignity in the coming weeks).

Have a good weekend, Rits.